I mean...you should probably hire good enough engineers that a website can withstand a pretty small amount of HN attention...
...I kid!
But seriously, though, how is it possible in 2025 that websites can still collapse from the relatively minuscule traffic that an HN front page sends? Are people upvoting this submission without having actually seen it?
EDIT: For the "works for me" people, the site's host, framer.app, uses Amazon's cloud and whole regions are getting SSL errors for this domain.
Companies that say they only want the "the best engineers" or "we only hire A-students" and "top of the cake-engineers" I've usually found to be a breeding-ground for a somewhat toxic work-environment.
> The best engineers make more than your entire payroll. They have opinions on tech debt and timelines. They have remote jobs, if they want them. They don’t go “oh, well, this is your third company, so I guess I’ll defer to you on all product decisions”. They care about comp, a trait you consider disqualifying. They can care about work-life balance, because they’re not desperate enough to feel the need not to. And however successful your company has been so far, they have other options they like better.
I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I think when people say they want the best engineers they sometimes mean the top 25% or something. They don't always have a delusional belief that the top 1% are just sitting around waiting for their amazing company to come along.
It's not 2010 anymore. Most startups can't even attract "the best engineers" much less hire them.
This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG?
You've got to be offering something really, really valuable like remote work, an interesting problem, and/or a new experience. Otherwise the math doesn't math.
I have seen organizations that actually want "the best" developers almost never.
They may say this, but what they are looking for are "the most compatible" developers. The distinction is monumental. The best developers are at the top 15% of a bell curve where the line is very close to flat, but what they are actually looking for are people in the range of 45-70% of the bell curve where there are the most people doing the same exact things as each other.
Conversely, I have seen many developers actually take lower paying jobs to get away from the bell curve stupidity.
What most companies consider to be the "best" engineers is different from what engineers would consider to be the best.
Companies want engineers that get the job done the way they want it. Building a structurally sound product is so far off their radar that actually being a good engineer isn't that important. Unless you're good enough that you have clout, you're better off focusing on your interpersonal skills and marketing yourself to these companies; even clout often isn't good enough.
When an employer says "we only hire the best", the most that can truly mean is they want to hire engineers who will play by the rules of their game. That's it. They can't define "best" beyond that without contradicting their other corporate values.
Treat empty statements like "we only hire the best" the same as "are you a coding rockstar?" and "bachelors required, masters preferred"; horsecrap to be ignored.
You're right, don't hire the best engineers - let them create a startup instead with more VC funding than you've ever dreamed of, then watch as they erode your market share through aggressive marketing, better features, and faster release cycles as they slowly displace you by siphoning off your second-best engineers and eventually get bought out by your biggest competitor.
> Would you rather spend four months in stasis waiting
This is a false dichotomy. Hiring slowly doesn't mean doing nothing. It's really more like "do you (CTO) want to slow down on building and become a manager now?" Waiting and finding someone who doesn't need managing can be way less distracting than going for someone imperfect because you've convinced yourself you need to hire now.
I mean, you don’t hire the best engineers by just blasting off a LinkedIn ad. Or by cold-emailing them. You hire them by already being their friend and offering a massive chunk of cash and equity to work on an interesting project, plus a variety of other concessions, as needed.
The best companies don’t generally do this, because it doesn’t scale. You can scale “find strong talent that hasn’t had its big moment yet, and teach them the trade” a little bit farther.
The best people have the best options which may be leaving the company only a few weeks to months when their ‘dream offer’ comes in. In addition most work doesn’t need the ‘best people’ but consistent and dedicated people. I think this was even in a Dale Carnegie course. I’d have to look it up. My point is ‘qualified’ people with good values are mostly want companies need.
A more generalizable approach might be to consider - what are you looking for that most other companies either are actively putting off or passively neglecting, and what's the best way to identify the best engineers in that group.
To use examples in the post, if you're remote then you can get "startup experience - hard worker - impressive project - aces your 20 ridiculous interviews" by getting in front of people who live in Ohio and people who live in the Bay Area and low key hate Caltrain. If you're willing to pay top of band salary all cash, ala Netflix, then you can be a Bay Area Only Senior Elites Need Apply type startup.
What about other things? What if you are, in fact, willing to let engineers decide whether they address tech debt, like the post calls out? Or, you don't overvalue confidence and talking and can appeal to female engineers, quiet engineers, or in general less competitive types? What if you want hard worker startup experience passes pseudo-IQ tests, but they don't need actual coding experience measured in years and you think AI and training can bridge the gap?
Note, I'm not saying any of these companies will necessarily be more successful with their hires, but they're being intentional with who they hire and how that fits the company's advantage in a way that the "you and everyone else" profiled in the post do not. Like, figure out what makes you different. Figure out how that will make your people different. Then write it in the job description, black text on white background (or the reverse in dark mode), plain language, so it's obvious.
I interviewed with an early stage pre-seed startup with a very young team, like 25-27. I was interviewed by someone way more junior than me. According to the recruiter, in 3 months, I've made it the furthest and he told me this startup was churning through top tier candidates left and right.
After my interview, I immediately knew why. The team was so junior they didn't know how to evaluate senior talent. They didn't know what they wanted. I've arguably interviewed more candidates than the person interviewing me.
Last I checked, they still haven't filled that role.
The strong hires I've given all came from underrated candidates who didn't come from trendy backgrounds. Still think Dan Luu's advice holds up even more at early stage startups. https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/
I always chuckle when I see a posting where the "BUSINESS" founder says something like "looking for a founding engineer to define our tech stack, but we've already decided we're going to use Python 2.8, Solaris, Azure and a custom build of VIM." [Obviously this is a bit of an exaggeration.]
There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically.
Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (like John Carmack) are great at generating well-founded opinions and finding clever solutions to difficult issues. Some engineers (like Bill Atkinson) worked mostly remotely and developed amazing technology, while other engineers (like Joel Spolsky) insisted on in-office and built a best-in-class mentorship organization.
While hiring people with exceptional talent is a step-change when it comes to any organization's ability to accomplish its goals, there is no one metric for "best." Much better to identify the specific skills for which you need exceptional talent, and to create a hiring funnel that identifies people who excel in that dimension.
Notch, Carmack, Spolsky may have engineering in their skillsets, but they are also product (game) designers and executives (and world class ones at that). I don’t think that’s really what people want when they’re looking to hire an engineer for their startup.
As for Bill Atkinson… looking at his Wikipedia page, looks like he was indeed a top notch engineer in the 80s, but doesn’t seem like he worked on anything noteworthy after that? Definitely not in the same league as the other 3 IMO.
Although I agree with the overall sentiment of the article, the reality in 2025 is that it is a totally dead market and we are still trying to figure out WTH is going on.
Some companies are holding their breaths due to political instability, others are in sectors that are already getting decimated (likely from the same instability above), yet others have reached a point where they (and "they" appear to be in a majority in their respective industries) are more centered on efficiency than headcount.
I'm employed and I'm grateful... I know plenty of people searching and are getting nothing but silence in their search. I think both sides of the hiring equation are getting a hard reset right now.
> The best engineers make more than your entire payroll. They have opinions on tech debt and timelines. They have remote jobs, if they want them. They don’t go “oh, well, this is your third company, so I guess I’ll defer to you on all product decisions”. They care about comp, a trait you consider disqualifying. They can care about work-life balance, because they’re not desperate enough to feel the need not to. And however successful your company has been so far, they have other options they like better.
In my experience, every single time a company has hired one of these “best engineers” they are not actually good at engineering or delivering anything.
It’s always someone who has some credential that makes them look like the most amazing engineer around. It could be someone who was engineer #7 at a unicorn startup. Some times it’s a person who got famous for speaking at conferences or launched a podcast that caught on. Other times it’s someone who has engineered every aspect of their appearance, from having an Ivy League university degree to having a professional smiling headshot on their professionally designed personal website. In one case the engineer was assumed to be amazing because he claimed to have an offer for a million dollar compensation package from another company so the executives thought they were getting a great deal at a lesser valuation.
Then the pattern is that they spend a couple years in meetings, writing proposals, and doing greenfield initiatives that don’t go anywhere. They get special exemptions to work remote on unique hours and everyone is expected to work around the superstar. Then two years later they disappear, off to the next company for another raise, without having done anything useful for you.
I’m guilty of hiring people like this, too. At one job the CEO reviewed high compensation hires and provided feedback but wouldn’t get in the way. I remember one candidate he flagged as sounding like a “prima donna”, which the hiring team scoffed at. Turns out, yes, he wanted everyone to cater to him, wanted to rewrite everything, and left before delivering anything of value or contributing to existing projects in a meaningful way.
76 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] thread...I kid!
But seriously, though, how is it possible in 2025 that websites can still collapse from the relatively minuscule traffic that an HN front page sends? Are people upvoting this submission without having actually seen it?
EDIT: For the "works for me" people, the site's host, framer.app, uses Amazon's cloud and whole regions are getting SSL errors for this domain.
Yep
- Sense of value and worth to society? Go volunteer.
- Wanting to help make someone else's dreams come true? Probably not.
- They pay us!
Ummmnnn. I may or may not be a top engineer. But, in large part for most people the big reason is: They get paid.
This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG?
You've got to be offering something really, really valuable like remote work, an interesting problem, and/or a new experience. Otherwise the math doesn't math.
They may say this, but what they are looking for are "the most compatible" developers. The distinction is monumental. The best developers are at the top 15% of a bell curve where the line is very close to flat, but what they are actually looking for are people in the range of 45-70% of the bell curve where there are the most people doing the same exact things as each other.
Conversely, I have seen many developers actually take lower paying jobs to get away from the bell curve stupidity.
Companies want engineers that get the job done the way they want it. Building a structurally sound product is so far off their radar that actually being a good engineer isn't that important. Unless you're good enough that you have clout, you're better off focusing on your interpersonal skills and marketing yourself to these companies; even clout often isn't good enough.
When an employer says "we only hire the best", the most that can truly mean is they want to hire engineers who will play by the rules of their game. That's it. They can't define "best" beyond that without contradicting their other corporate values.
Treat empty statements like "we only hire the best" the same as "are you a coding rockstar?" and "bachelors required, masters preferred"; horsecrap to be ignored.
/s
This is a false dichotomy. Hiring slowly doesn't mean doing nothing. It's really more like "do you (CTO) want to slow down on building and become a manager now?" Waiting and finding someone who doesn't need managing can be way less distracting than going for someone imperfect because you've convinced yourself you need to hire now.
The best companies don’t generally do this, because it doesn’t scale. You can scale “find strong talent that hasn’t had its big moment yet, and teach them the trade” a little bit farther.
What about other things? What if you are, in fact, willing to let engineers decide whether they address tech debt, like the post calls out? Or, you don't overvalue confidence and talking and can appeal to female engineers, quiet engineers, or in general less competitive types? What if you want hard worker startup experience passes pseudo-IQ tests, but they don't need actual coding experience measured in years and you think AI and training can bridge the gap?
Note, I'm not saying any of these companies will necessarily be more successful with their hires, but they're being intentional with who they hire and how that fits the company's advantage in a way that the "you and everyone else" profiled in the post do not. Like, figure out what makes you different. Figure out how that will make your people different. Then write it in the job description, black text on white background (or the reverse in dark mode), plain language, so it's obvious.
After my interview, I immediately knew why. The team was so junior they didn't know how to evaluate senior talent. They didn't know what they wanted. I've arguably interviewed more candidates than the person interviewing me.
Last I checked, they still haven't filled that role.
The strong hires I've given all came from underrated candidates who didn't come from trendy backgrounds. Still think Dan Luu's advice holds up even more at early stage startups. https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/
Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (like John Carmack) are great at generating well-founded opinions and finding clever solutions to difficult issues. Some engineers (like Bill Atkinson) worked mostly remotely and developed amazing technology, while other engineers (like Joel Spolsky) insisted on in-office and built a best-in-class mentorship organization.
While hiring people with exceptional talent is a step-change when it comes to any organization's ability to accomplish its goals, there is no one metric for "best." Much better to identify the specific skills for which you need exceptional talent, and to create a hiring funnel that identifies people who excel in that dimension.
As for Bill Atkinson… looking at his Wikipedia page, looks like he was indeed a top notch engineer in the 80s, but doesn’t seem like he worked on anything noteworthy after that? Definitely not in the same league as the other 3 IMO.
Some companies are holding their breaths due to political instability, others are in sectors that are already getting decimated (likely from the same instability above), yet others have reached a point where they (and "they" appear to be in a majority in their respective industries) are more centered on efficiency than headcount.
I'm employed and I'm grateful... I know plenty of people searching and are getting nothing but silence in their search. I think both sides of the hiring equation are getting a hard reset right now.
In my experience, every single time a company has hired one of these “best engineers” they are not actually good at engineering or delivering anything.
It’s always someone who has some credential that makes them look like the most amazing engineer around. It could be someone who was engineer #7 at a unicorn startup. Some times it’s a person who got famous for speaking at conferences or launched a podcast that caught on. Other times it’s someone who has engineered every aspect of their appearance, from having an Ivy League university degree to having a professional smiling headshot on their professionally designed personal website. In one case the engineer was assumed to be amazing because he claimed to have an offer for a million dollar compensation package from another company so the executives thought they were getting a great deal at a lesser valuation.
Then the pattern is that they spend a couple years in meetings, writing proposals, and doing greenfield initiatives that don’t go anywhere. They get special exemptions to work remote on unique hours and everyone is expected to work around the superstar. Then two years later they disappear, off to the next company for another raise, without having done anything useful for you.
I’m guilty of hiring people like this, too. At one job the CEO reviewed high compensation hires and provided feedback but wouldn’t get in the way. I remember one candidate he flagged as sounding like a “prima donna”, which the hiring team scoffed at. Turns out, yes, he wanted everyone to cater to him, wanted to rewrite everything, and left before delivering anything of value or contributing to existing projects in a meaningful way.